Friday, 9 April 2010

INTRODUCING MYSELF AND THE LINGALA-ENGLISH DICTIONARY

Dear
visitor,

My name is Rogério Goma. One of my favourite hobbies is to learn languages.
Apart from Lingala, I speak Kikongo, Portuguese, French, German and English.
I am from Angola, but I did my primary school in Kinshasa, the capital of the
Democratic Republic of Congo, and went on later to do my secondary school in
Pointe-Noire (second largest city in Congo-Brazzaville). This blog is
essentially for me to share my passion for African languages and encourage
other Africans to do the same thing. A dictionary Kikongo-English and English-Kikongo
could be my next project if things would work out in line with my expectations.

ENGLISH-LINGALA DICTIONARY (AND
VICE-VERSA)

This dictionary will
- among other things - help you to understand some features of the Congolese
culture, in particular the Congolese music.

The majority of
Congolese people speak modern Lingala, which contains a lot of French words,
because of the colonial past. The Democratic Republic of Congo was colonised by
Belgium, whereas Congo-Brazzaville was a French colony.

While working on this
dictionary, I was primarily guided by the intention of producing something
which will help in day to day communication. I did not want a dictionary full
of obsolete words. I decided to select only words that are widely used in
conversations. This dictionary contains therefore many French words, as the
latter have become part of today’s Lingala. This dictionary cannot of course
pretend to completeness.

You can order the
English-Lingala dictionary from any bookshop in the UK. The price is £ 10.50.

HOW
TO USE THIS DICTIONARY

Verbs start with “ko” in Lingala.
Two examples: koloba: to speak and kotala: to see. To look up the verb koloba,
please go to “L” and find loba. To look up kotala, go to T and find tala.

What I wonder if Congoleses know Lingala why when you ask them the favor that they say a song in Lingala, Congoleses say not knowing about. I wonder is that they do not want to teach Lingala or is a way to use them as spies?